Procedural cop RPG No Truce with the Furies sounds so very odd and exciting
What is this; I love this
If No Truce with the Furies [official site] is a "police procedural RPG", as developers ZA/UM Studio say, then I want to see its world's CSI series. It stars a disgraced detective in an anotherworldly seaside town, and sounds to be full of interesting ideas. The devs talk about an inventory for thoughts, about walking around the inside of your own head to talk to your senses and memories, about strengths coming with weaknesses, about Planescape: Torment and Kentucky Route Zero as big influences, about disco pants... I don't know what this game is but I want to. If you're interested too, hey, peep this trailer:
I mentioned No Furies briefly after Humble announced it's part of their initial publishing lineup, but goodness me it warrants a post of its own. After that post, I rummaged in the dev blog and -- goodness me! -- it fizzes with ideas.
Dialogue happens through a weird tape computer which is itself part of an in-world mystery. They want a feel of Dungeons & Dragons - but the focus of "heavy-duty story-oriented D&D" rather than just tactical combat. Passive skills interject to inform you of things. Dialogue is combat and combat is dialogue, and digging in your thought inventory (or drug bag) can be vital:
"You can prop up your side by rummaging through your Thought Cabinet and changing stuff around: maybe it would pay to be a radical feminist at this juncture? Or wait, no! Better to think really, really hardcore racist thoughts. That'll do the trick, dazzle them with your advanced race theory! But would your character do that? Do you want to take your character in that direction?"
And even if you do fail, you might be glad to:
"Failure puts you in the skin of your character. You can be embarrassing. Weak. Ridiculous. Full of yourself. Just plain wrong. Paranoid. Idiotic. Every director knows that actors build characters out of failures and fears, not heroics. We've noticed players instinctively feel the same way. They begin to search for red checks to fail at. Especially the right ones – the ones that fit their character. They do this for character building, but also because they're curious of the outcome. It feels like playing with fire."
Or this, read this about character attributes and how even your strengths can worth against you:
"A high Intellect makes you overly confident – a cocksure intellectual. You're vulnerable to flattery, and easily lose yourself in details. (The game becomes longer). While having a low Intellect makes you dim and superficial, prone to superstition and being plain wrong."
All of this sounds great. Reading through their ideas and explanations has me jolly excited for a game where you're always flawed but you struggle to overcome, and interesting things happen even when it does go wrong. As an expert fuck-up often undone by my own 'strengths' but enjoying the oddities that can cause and rolling ever onwards, I'm delighted to see No Truce reaching towards this. I couldn't tell you how this all comes together, or whether the writing can carry it, or... but the ideas are very exciting.
Screenshots and videos are quite pretty too, and apparently they've got music from that there British Sea Power who are always on the radio.
No Truce with the Furies is due around the end of 2017. Only another 300 or so sleeps!